This is the story I know well.

One of my favorite yoga teachers once told me that, in yoga, we all become story-tellers.

In class recently, as she strode among our mats, pressing her flat palms against the rise of our backs, pulling at our upturned hips, smoothing the line of our spines, she said, “Thank you for coming and sharing your story with me tonight.”

We rippled, shuffled, a murmur of limbs adjusting, of lungs filling—we weren’t speaking.  What story-sharing was she talking about?

“This is the story I know well,” she continued.  ”The story of your arrival, the story of your work, the story of your yoga.”

It was such a fitting observation, considering I have been thinking of my yoga story a lot lately, largely because I just finished Benjamin Lorr‘s “Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga.”  Part-memoir, part-research, and part-expose, “Hell-Bent” tells quite a story about Ben’s personal journey through discovering and practicing yoga, as well as many other stories about Bikram Choudhury, about other yogis (professionals and average practitioners), about Bikram’s teacher training program, about extreme back-bending, about yoga-induced weight loss, about science and physiology and philosophy and the deep, confusing, fascinating history of yoga itself.

Even if you aren’t a yogi, the average reader would likely appreciate the humor, candor, strangeness, and humanity of Ben’s tale and of the yoga world he picks apart and analyzes.

I admit, however, now that I’ve finished it, that I have struggled to pinpoint exactly how I felt about the book.  Did I love it (hundreds of pages devoted to my yoga!)?  Did I hate it (learning truths about people in my yoga community, truths that I don’t care to know)?  Why did I blow through some parts and struggle reading through other parts?

I was impressed at the effort, of course.  (Bravo, Ben!)  A bit jealous of the byline, the yogi-turned-published-author?  Absolutely.  Entertained and educated throughout, indeed.  Inspired to haul my own knotted body into the hot room?  Yes, a thousand times over.

But…what about the story itself?

That has been my struggle.  And, I’ve finally found my answer.

Here’s the thing:

We each have our yoga story.

Many of them start the same:   We wandered/stumbled/were dragged into a hot room, usually by someone who loves us, someone who knew the yoga would work on our tired bodies, our battered hearts.  The first class passed in a haze of sweat, nausea, emotion, frustration, amazement, confusion, terror, humor, maybe even humiliation—largely because we watched, in stunned wonder, as the yoga waged war on our big, old American egos and won.  We left swearing we’d never return.

Later, we felt transformed.

Later still, we did return.  Whether it took one day or 100 days or even a whole year. We came back, maybe to a different studio, maybe with a different companion, maybe even more tired and more battered than we were the first time around.  But, we came back to the yoga.  And kept coming back.

And then, our mats became churches, our holy place of communion with our true self.  Our practices became our best friends: we are wholly devoted to one another.  Our teachers morphed into prophets.  We each became willing, eager, dutiful students.  The studios shifted into homes, communities, places of refuge.

The yoga takes hold, and we hold it back, and we become obsessed with breaking down, understanding, knowing, memorizing, and honoring every last little detail.  It is one of the greatest love stories I’ve heard told over and over and over again.

Throughout the six-plus years of my own practice, I have read countless blogs, books, essays, magazines, and articles about this one subject.  It astounds me, even now, that so many people—present self included!—are so eager to talk and write about their yoga, “get” it, analyze it, share its teachings, praise the lessons we’ve learnt from it.

And for what?  Why?  (Side note:  the irony of this question is not lost on me, given I’ve devoted nearly five year’s worth of blog posts to own my yoga practice.)

Especially given yoga is, I think, an incredibly intimate form of therapy, both physical and emotional.  A dedicated yoga practice is grueling, messy, difficult, wondrous, and profoundly life-changing.  Old injuries resurface, old hurts bruise anew, a past long buried suddenly and completely cracks through the walls we built to protect ourselves from those old wars, those old ways.  On our mats, we can’t hide; we face and work through it all.  (Although “Hell-Bent” tends to focus more on the physical effects of the yoga, the moments when he touches on the emotional blowbacks of a particularly intense class or workshop are incredibly touching and real.)

Why are we so inclined to share the arduous steps of that journey, that transformation?  Why do we ask others to bear witness?  Are we seeking validation?  Are we seeking praise?

Are we so enamored with our yoga, so enthralled by our practice, that we’re blinded by our adoration, our pride?  We are in love—with this yoga, with this new self!  And we want all the world to see!  Is that it?

“Hell-Bent” is an attempt to answer all sorts of questions, about Bikram yoga, about yoga’s vast history and complex origins, about the author’s own skepticisms, about the actual physiological ramifications of doing 50 back-bends a day or logging 6+ hours in a room heated above 100 degrees.  The book also provides a rare inside look into the Bikram Yoga community through copious interviews, research, quotes, and first-hand experiences and, in doing so, validates that this yoga is powerful, yes, but power can lead to corruption, hatred, extreme and unhealthy behaviors.  I found these explorations interesting, if not a little overdone.  I appreciated Ben’s meticulous research.  I liked that he did answer a lot of questions—but also left a lot unanswered, unsaid, open to the reader’s own conclusions.  I applaud his honesty.  His writing strikes a nice balance between journalistic, comedic, and soulful.  And, throughout, his wit and willingness to poke fun at himself and at the yoga community he’s a part of helped buoy a narrative that, like many a yoga-memoir before it, could have started sinking onto the bottom shelf of the self-help aisle.

However, I realized, come the book’s end, that the one question that plagued me—the one question that has, over the last many months, swayed me away from this here blog—is:  So, what?

And what I mean by that is:

We each have our yoga story.  And no two are alike.

But why are we so compelled to tell them?

In the good moments, I found myself throughly engrossed in “Hell-Bent,” to the point I couldn’t put it down or couldn’t wait to get into the hot room to determine if I saw or felt my practice differently, based on what I’d read.

And, in other moments, it was as though I just left a tough yoga class, and I’m sitting outside the hot room, satisfied and satiated and utterly spent, grinning stupidly, sweat dripping from my ears and my fingertips, my mind empty, my skin tingling, and suddenly I hear people going on and on about how they hated *this* or *that* about the class or thought the room was just too damn hot or didn’t understand WHY they couldn’t talk to each other or couldn’t *believe* the X, Y, and Z of the yoga that I love and that has changed my life.  The yoga and the community that has, for the most part, treated me quite well.

It took me a long time (read: a lot of yoga) to understand that type of reaction wasn’t wrong or bad.  It was, quite simply, that man or woman’s individual experience.  It was, simply, his or her story, and it didn’t matter whether I agreed.

Ben’s story and the various stories he tells in his book are just that:  his.  And I have mine.  And you have yours.  And we all tell them differently.

None are right or wrong, better or worse, bigger or smaller, more or less justified at being told in the first place.  None are more or less deserving.  We can’t expect that every last story will resonate.  But, each should be respected.

It all comes back to the yoga, of course.   The point isn’t the story we’re telling (or selling).  In the same way that the point isn’t how deep you can curl your spine in your backbend or how high you can kick your leg in dancer or how lightly you leap into chaturanga dandasana.  The point isn’t how much weight you lose, how cute your clothes are, whether the teacher knows your name, or how wet your mat is by class end.

The point is that you showed up.  That you came back, despite fears, against reservations, a pebble of hope caught in your shoes.

The point is that you arrived honestly, that you bared your blackest, bloodiest demons and your best, truest self and didn’t turn either away, that you opened your heart again—so much so, in fact, that you fell in love, over and over.

And who, really, doesn’t want to tell that story to anyone willing to listen?

October roads.

Each year, I wait all year for October.

The smells—cool autumn air churning through naked tree tops, and cinnamon and pumpkin and sage burning in candles or baking in ovens, and spiced cider, and the hot, buttery waft of apple turnovers and apple pie and, really, apple everything.

And the sounds—of the leaves underfoot, and the children running home from school, and the scratch of rakes gathering another year’s harvest into piles, and the slow quieting of the birds.

And the sensations—of battening down the hatches, of pulling out the wool and the cashmere and the down comforters, of feeling nostalgic, of drawing the summer shut, fully, finally, and looking forward to the last, great heights of the year: the holidays.

Each autumn, I think: this will be The Year.

This October, I am on the road.

So far this month, I’ve spent more days in Washington, DC and New York City than I have in my home state.  Each week, I pack my small bag and re-fill my toiletries case.  I drive myself to Logan Airport in the dark, before dawn.  I now have to check the monitors to make sure I know where exactly I’m going and when.  I board the shuttle flights full of red-eyed business travelers such as myself, and I wonder: Is this The Year?  Is this The October?

When it all changes.  When it all happens.

In between the flights and the hotels and stuffy, greasy taxi cabs, I try to find the poetry of my favorite month:  Listening to my niece recite snippets of the “Five Little Pumpkins” song I have sung to her at least 30 times.  Chasing my dear friend’s little boy beneath the boughs of Macintosh trees, our soles slipping on cores and twigs, our fingers sticky, his laughter infectious and sweet.

Sitting in a bar booth with my mother and my father and my sister on a rainy Friday afternoon, drinking pumpkin beer out of pints rimmed in sugared cinnamon, devouring big, steaming bowls of clam chowder, and talking, and laughing, and loving.

Taking long, patient jogs up and down the Marblehead streets, ribboned like presents in crimson and gold.  Moving across my yoga mat and hearing the cracks in my hips and my knees and knowing, with a smile, the heat and humidity of summer has left me, and now my body is tight from the cool, eager embrace of fall.

Staring out a car window and holding my breath in the dazzling splash of red and yellow and orange, thrown across the rolling wheat fields and dairy farms of Quebec, and saying we could not be North, not when the sky broke open so beautifully, so grandly, so exquisitely, like out West.  Walking in circles with you around a fountain in the heart of Montreal and thinking the leaves beneath our shoes looked like coins, like copper pennies, and I wanted to pick one up, and toss it into the water, and wish and wish and wish.

The October when it all changes, it all happens.

The wonder of living in a place with seasons is that the changes outside of us can fuel and inspire and direct the changes within us—quarterly, to boot.

My life feels, as ever, chaotic and busy and strange, but it is changing, like the world around me.  I can feel the shift in my thoughts, my priorities, my focus.  I can see clearly again.  I’m not so afraid anymore.

And I keep waiting for the tell-tale burst—of energy, of romance, of motivation–that always comes to me with October.  But, sitting here in a Washington, DC hotel room, and looking at my calendar full of New York trips and friends coming to town and family visiting at the end of the month (and, in between the trips and visits, an attempt at yoga and exercise and socializing and loving and writing), I can only smile and shrug and hope I get through it all safely, soundly, with my good health and some last shred of sanity.

Because I’m beginning to think this month is less about the burst and more about the bloom of what’s to come.

Do you ever think of me in the quiet, in the crowd?

If you didn’t know it already, this is my love—my month.

Do you know, October, how I adore you?  Do you ever think of me in the quiet, in the crowd, of the rest of the year, as I so often think of you?*

I wrote an entire “meme” on October once, and it’s a post that, years later, I still love to read.  (Sidenote: Do bloggers still do “memes”?)

In other Octobers, he told me this, and this, and this, and I did my best to listen.

Exactly two Octobers ago, I mused on turning thirty.  Not to worry—it all turned out well.

Always, we must circle back to the original “October comes” post.

And the poetry of past Octobers.

Oh, yes, and the yoga challenges of past Octobers, too.

Last October, in 2011, I only wrote three posts the entire month.  Of them, I wrote of what I loved.

And what will be of this one, this month, of 2012, the fifth time my favorite season arrives and I have this here blog to chronicle its passing?

This is the October I will watch Marblehead moving through the burning, bright change of seasons.

This is the October I will travel to Washington, DC or New York City literally every single week, meaning I will spend more time out of New England than in it.

This is the October I will see a good friend get married, and meet a best friend’s baby girl, and visit with an old and beloved high school friend, and baby-sit my niece for a long weekend so my sister and brother in law can go stay at a bed and breakfast in the Berkshires, on my dime, as thanks for letting me stay in their house for a year.

This is the October when, I think, it will all come to a head.  It must.

This is the October of music.

This is the October of release.  This is, also, the October of embrace.

October comes—that is certain.  What remains to be seen is what we do with its fine, fiery arrival.

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* Stolen lyric from “Where Are You Now?”, a new Mumford & Sons song.  Go buy their latest album.  It is, I assure you, nothing short of wonderful.

On entering the next phase.

Lately, I look around, and all I can think is:  My life and the lives of those I love are in such states of clamor and change.

Suddenly, a year’s predictable evolution, guided by the seasonal hope for the new and the better, has taken on a seemingly unsustainable pace.  Everything is blurred, overbooked, smoking with effort.

My friends and I—we don’t feel all that young anymore.  Sure, we try.  I give us credit for trying!  But, mostly, we work hard, we struggle to succeed, we fret over what we’ve missed and not accomplished and left unfinished.  We cater to the needs of our families.  We suffer a hang-over after all of two glasses of wine.  Some days, I wonder if this is when it starts to happen: the weight creeping on, the friendships fading, the wrinkles widening and deepening, the grays going white and wild.  I cling to the belief that I am still in control of all of this.  But, such a belief is naive, child’s play.  Ain’t I a grown woman already?

Hardly anyone seems capable of keeping up.

How, then, do we sustain?  Are we able?  What gives?

And it’s caused me to wonder—and worry—that my friendships are entering a new and slightly unsettling phase.

Every single one of my friends’ lives is frenetic these days, including my own.  All of us are hopelessly busy, stressed, tired, overwhelmed, constantly in motion, and maxed.  Just plain maxed out.  We miss phone calls, we cancel get togethers, we don’t remember to return e-mails or text messages.  I never thought I’d say it, but thank God for Facebook or else we might have no sense of what was happening in one another’s lives.

I wonder—and worry—is our effort slipping?  Are giving up just a little?  When we look at the daily list of priorities—job, kids, significant other, house, bills, school, extended family, exercise, errands—has friendship fallen to the wayside?  Or, worse, to the bottom?

Maybe, now that the majority of my closest friends and I are into our 30s, many married, with children, with careers, with homes in our names and addresses in suburbs scattered across the country, maybe we are no longer so focused on the once all-consuming need to be close to one another, to talk regularly, to see each other’s faces and hear each other’s laughter.

Maybe we are all trying to figure out, in this next phase of adulthood that involves kids, mortgages, multi-year marriages, and more demanding jobs, how we realistically can manage or maintain our friendship.  Maybe this is the phase where we start talking only two or three times a year, getting together annually, if we’re lucky, and emailing on the rare occasion in between.

Maybe that is all we are capable of—or all we are willing to give.

Or, maybe, we just don’t need each other as much as we once did.

I am holding myself accountable in these maybes, too.  I readily acknowledge my own overflowing plate of shifting priorities and, a top it, my tendency to withdraw into myself when I’m overwhelmed or sad or just plain wiped out by life.  I default to the mindset of “Retreat, retreat, retreat!” rather than “Engage!  Engage!  Engage!”

Honestly?  On the days when I finally log off of my computer, after 10+ hours of calls, meetings, and staring at my computer screen, the very last thing I want to do is hop on the phone with a friend and shoot the proverbial shit for an hour or more while we attempt to catch each other up on the last several weeks—or months—of our lives.  That may be terrible to admit, but it’s true.  I’m the odd, hybrid introvert/extrovert who, on my extrovert days, relishes in refueling myself with the company and conversation of loved ones, and on my introvert days, wants absolutely nothing to do with humans at large, loved ones or not, and seeks solace, comfort, and rejuvenation on my yoga mat, within the pages of a book, or by the scratch of my pen across the page.

However, I recognize, especially lately, that I don’t necessarily have any one person or any one thing forcing me to engage instead of retreat—other than myself and my friends.  I don’t have the husband.  I don’t have the baby or the mortgage.  Yes, of course, there are plenty of wonderful things I do have, but at the end of the day, I don’t have a child tugging on my pant leg asking for more goldfish or a partner pulling at my shirt sleeve asking about my day.

Honestly?  I don’t necessarily feel like I have any one person that needs me.  Other than my friends.  (And my immediate family, but do they count?)

And that need—or, rather feeling that sense of need—for my friends and from my friends has slipped further and further away.

I wonder:  do we need each other less now, in these years?

I wonder—and worry—do we have less to talk about with each other, because our lives are all evolving at different paces and with different priorities?  I can listen to stories of burping babies and breastfeeding, but I can’t relate.  And my friends can listen to stories about dating and living singly in the suburbs, but they can’t relate.  Where does that leave us?

Yes, this shift in our relationships, in our attention to one another, is glaring to me.

Some days, I ache for that intense, wonderful closeness you can only share with a best, dear friend whose love and attention you’ve spent the last several hours soaking up and storing for later.  Other days, I understand we are older now, and we have all chosen different paths, and our history is the one thing that still unites us and compels us to return to that central place we all know.

Hopefully, that place will never change.

And, hopefully, we will always come back.

On choosing choice.

The trouble with you is that you sometimes get a bad rap.

See, a lot people think they can’t have you.  They think they’re stuck with what they have, where they live, what they do for a living, how they eat, how they look, who they are.  They think you are a luxury afforded only to a few.  (Okay, I admit, on my bad days, I may think all of this, too.)

We are, to a certain degree, a product of our circumstances, our genetics, our culture, our sex.  I didn’t get a say in where I was born or how tall I’d grow or who my parents are.  I didn’t get to select “green eyes” and “freckles” and “freakishly long second toe” when in utero.  Clearly, you failed me on that last one.

But, sometimes, I think you are a best-kept secret.  A hidden gem.  The lone trump card.

Because people don’t take advantage of you as they should.  People don’t use you for all your potential.  People ignore that there you sit, waiting, eager, ready, quivering in anticipation.

Instead, we point fingers elsewhere.  We look in every other direction but yours. We curse you, even, for presenting us with so many options, for not telling us, plainly, what to do.  We fail to see sometimes that, really, you are offering us all that we could do, and be, and experience, and love—and more.  Blinded by our own indecision and fear, we regret you ever arrived in the first place.

I want to know:  does rejection hurt you, too?

Tonight, during that last sunlit hour of the day, I embraced your company.  You held stride with me during my run, hand in my hand, whispering into my ear, the sound of you tickling my skin like the arms of the black-eyed susans reaching up out of the flowerbeds, brushing against my shins and knees, as we jogged the empty Marblehead side streets together.

You hinted, briefly, at what’s to come.

You pulled me down Darling Street, then up High Street, and even tugged me along the eerie length of Mechanic Street, with its dark-faced houses and overgrown alleyways and knotted front porches, a stretch of Marblehead’s Old Town that I am convinced is haunted.

You pointed out that I did not have to keep going; you cheered me on when I did.

You helped me remember that although I am certainly—and proudly—a product of my parents and of Pennsylvania and of the past, I am also—and will continue to be—a product of you:  choice.  Rather, my choices.

In the still, cool twilight, you reminded me that, if I have nothing else, I am fortunate enough, aware enough, blessed enough, and brave enough to have you. A mighty weapon indeed.

And, if I didn’t say it earlier, if I don’t say it enough:  thank you.

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Another writing prompt:  Write about an action as if it were a person in less than 500 words.  This is roughly 470 words.